Vondel, Joost van den

Vondel, Joost van den (1587-1679), Dutch poet and playwright, born in Cologne, Germany; for most of his life he lived in Amsterdam. Although largely self-taught, Vondel became the outstanding poet of Holland's Golden Age. As a humanist, he rebelled against the strict Calvinism of his day; later he converted to Roman Catholicism.

Vondel's first successful play, Het Pascha (1612, The Passover), and his early poems were the result of his study of classical drama and poetic theory. Lyrics from his subsequent plays are considered the finest poetry in the Dutch language. His adaptations of classical Greek tragedies, masterpieces of the high Baroque style, are actually concerned with the search for Christian faith. They were accompanied by a parallel series of original tragedies—among them Hierusalem verwoest (1620, Jerusalem Laid Waste); Jeptha (1659); and a trilogy: Lucifer (1654; trans. 1917), which is thought to have influenced the English poet John Milton, Adam in ballingschap (1664; Adam in Exile, 1952), and Noah (1667). Medieval Dutch traditions shaped one of his most famous plays, Gijsbrecht van Aemstel (1637).